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Mentally Ill Prisoners

A video still shows a cell door in a prison hallway. A fire can be seen inside through the cell's window.
Analysis August 11
Why Did an Illinois Prison Fail to Stop 70 Fires?
Three key takeaways from our investigation of the epidemic of fires at the Joliet Treatment Center.
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A video still shows firefighters standing in a prison hallway. A cell door with black soot is open on the left.
News August 4
Illinois Lawmakers Decry Prison’s ‘Gut-Wrenching,’ ‘Heartbreaking’ Conditions
After The Marshall Project found scores of fires set by men at a Joliet prison, legislators want improved fire safety and mental health treatment.
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An illustration shows flames behind a prison cell door as smoke billows into a green hallway.
Feature July 24
A Prison on Fire
Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.
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Several printed family photos and a hospital record on a table.
Cleveland January 7
Who’s in Ohio’s Psychiatric Hospitals, How Did They Get There and When Do They Get Out?
Criminal defendants are overwhelming an understaffed state mental health system that, a few years ago, served thousands more patients.
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A Black medical ward assistant in a white uniform looks through an open door.
Closing Argument September 6, 2025
For People Mentally Unfit For Trial, Waits For Treatment Get Longer
U.S. defendants must be able to understand the charges against them — but many who can’t remain behind bars waiting for mental health treatment.
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A photo collage displays a jail, a brick building surrounded by wire fences, men in jail uniforms holding a burning fabric by a broken window, a demolition excavator, a badge that reads “City of St. Louis Division of Corrections” and a text clipping.
St. Louis April 21, 2025
St. Louis Jail Is a ‘Potential Powder Keg’
A facility built for progress reflects ‘decades of neglect’ and the city’s deepest struggles, from mental illness to systemic dysfunction.
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Life Inside August 26, 2021
My Uncle Died the Day He Was Released From Jail. I’m Still Trying to Understand Why.
“Sudden cardiac death,” is the cause listed on my uncle Bryan’s death certificate. But it didn’t feel sudden at all — not when you factor in his underlying mental and physical health problems, years of poor prison medical care and the fact that he caught COVID-19 in his Arizona jail.
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Raymond Riles, right, with Ronald O’Bryan at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in 1979. In that era, incarcerated people on death row could go to the exercise yard for three 90-minute periods a week.
Death Sentences February 4, 2021
He’s Too Mentally Ill to Execute. Why Is He Still on Death Row After 45 Years?
Raymond Riles has been on death row longer than anyone in America. He’s one of many who have languished there for decades with severe mental illnesses.
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Case in Point June 6, 2019
Mentally Ill and Languishing in Jail
A Pennsylvania case illustrates a national problem: People with psychiatric illnesses often remain incarcerated while they wait for a hospital bed.
By , Leila Miller and
Feature November 27, 2018
Why Is Karl Taylor Dead?
Our prisons are our mental wards. One fatal case in New York shows where that can lead.
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